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Spit shinin’ the ol’ game, make ‘er all nice and pretty.

Gonna Catcha v.0.9.1 is now available for download from the game’s info page. It is largely a “polish” update; I’m tweaking things here and there to start finalizing the game. Here is a summary of what was updated:

Bumped up the score requirements for getting extra lives, from 20k/40k/60k… to 20k/50k/80k… I felt that getting extra lives was a bit too easy in previous versions, especially in the later levels where points are more abundant. Players are reminded of the requirements on the title screen.

Updated the user interface. If either player gets more than 5 lives, the lives counter just draws one icon and then the number of lives. (Shown in above screenshot, sort of. Just imagine a number beside Donum’s icon on the lower-left.) Before it would keep drawing icons the more lives a player has, eventually intruding on the space of the round counter and the other player’s life icons. I was surprised it took me this long to realize this problem. In addition to that, I’ve added small indications that appear when a player picks up a power-up item (P): “LOnG” for the first pickup that extends shot range, and “DBL” for the second that gives the player a double shot. Before this friendly reminder, the power-up item was the only item that did not obviously indicate what it does.

Rewrote the help manual and changelog as a Compiled HTML Help file (CHM). Now in colour! Images, links, and an index! Multimedia for the win! But seriously, the manual looks much better and easier to use now.

Lastly, I updated the “Starring” screen to include the new, and possibly finalized, Chinese names for the characters. This time I opted for a transliteration than is biased towards the pronunciation of each Hanzi rather than the meaning,, using this chart as a basis.

Pohena Das: 波伊娜 ・ 達絲 (Trad.) / 波伊娜 ・ 达丝 (Simp.)

Mandarin (Pinyin): bo1 yi1 na4 da2 si1

Cantonese (Yale): bo1 yi1 naa4 daat6 si1

Donum Dono: 多南姆 ・ 多儺 (Trad.) / 多南姆 ・ 多傩 (Simp.)

Mandarin (Pinyin): duo1 nan2 mu3 duo1 nuo2

Cantonese (Yale): do1 naam4 mou5 do1 no4

The problem I had with Pohena’s old name (魄伊娜) was that the Cantonese pronunciation for it didn’t sound very nice (paak3 yi1 naa4), and being the Chinese dialect I grew up with, it was gnawing at the back of my head. It does work very well in Mandarin (po4) though and its meaning is relevant (魄 = “soul, spirit”), but still. As a compromise, her name is now 波伊娜. I had a similar problem with Donum old name; actually, it was much worse: 當納睦 ・ 當儺, dong1 naap6 muk6 dong1 no4. I also decided to simplify his name and came up with 多南姆 ・ 多儺. Fun fact: his last name, 多儺, can be interpreted as “many exorcisms of evil spirits”. It would fit Pohena better, but meh.

I plan on rewriting the bio pages on this website, not just to update the names, but because the info on there is out-of-date. The lore of the Gonna Catcha universe has changed since I put that page up. I’ve also considered incorporating it and the other extended descriptions of the game linked on the game’s info page to the manual. That will be part of my next update.

P.S. The Japanese transcriptions for their names are unchanged for now: ポイナ・ダス (Poina Dasu) and ドナム・ドノー (Donamu Donō). I don’t know why I decided to put that out there.

P.P.S. Wish I knew something about transcribing to Korean Hangul… and Vietnamese.